Thursday, January 31, 2013

ALPA Pilot Income Tax Rebate Discovered.

Certain Pilots are
eligible for a special payment to cover all income taxes that result
from expense reimbursements. To qualify for this large rebate and
significantly lower your income tax bill for 2013, you need to meet the
following requirements:

You must be an ALPA National Officer.
To be an officer, you must be hand-picked by a small group of people
instead of elected by the membership at large.

You must be willing to accept this
special payment that is provided on the backs of hard-working members
who were not asked if such payments are appropriate.

You might be wondering if this is a joke
or is there really a provision that requires the membership to pay the
net income tax liability for ALPA National Officers? Incredibly, this
is absolutely true! At the October 2012 ALPA Board of Directors
meeting, the BOD approved this new "tax rebate" payment. ALPA National
Officers are paid extravagant allowances for a variety of things such as
housing. While reporting to the members that these are "expenses", in
reality, the IRS views paying for your mortgage as "income" and levies
income taxes as appropriate. Of course, this Gross Up Payment is RETROACTIVE to January 1st, 2011. ALPA National officers have now been authorized an annual payment to cover their tax burden. Read the resolution below:

During the month of October 2012, ALPA
member elected Representatives participated in what is arguably the most
important Board of Directors meeting in ALPA history. Faced with
multiple lawsuits, declining membership and the potential exit of Delta
and United, the decisions made at this meeting would be critical.

At the time of this meeting, the most recent MCF Status Report indicated that the MCF had fallen to less than $35 Million in uncommitted funds and to a total funds of only $47 Million.
Constitutionally, ALPA is directed to maintain the MCF at a level
between $70 Million and $150 Million. Seeing that the MCF was well
below the targeted amount, what action did your elected
representatives take?

1. They LOWERED the dues rate to 1.90% effective January 1st, 2014.

2. They RAISED the
dues on any airline that had only a 401K for retirement by deleting the
exemption that previously calculated the dues amount after 401K
contributions had been met.

3. They gave the National Officers a RAISE by authorizing an Income Tax Gross Up Payment to cover the net tax liability
caused by all reported expenses. Incredibly, our dues dollars are being
used to alleviate the tax burden resulting from the exorbitant expenses
(housing allowance, e.g.) provided to the officers.

4. Most importantly, they changed the Administrative Manual to allow any excess funds, after the budget needs are met, to go to the MCF or Kitty Hawk Insurance Company. This means that the ALPA officer salaries, retirements and required Presidential Oil Painting take priority over properly funding the MCF! With the MCF sitting at less than HALF of what it should be, ALPA chose to fund it with leftovers.
Having said that, in the event that items like dues from Profit Sharing
create a surplus in any year, ALPA can push all the excess offshore to
Kitty Hawk where there is no accountability to the membership. This is
clearly important considering the TWA and AirTran lawsuit outcomes are
bearing down on ALPA finances in 2013.